It’s said that if anything pushes to its furthest infinite expression, it transforms into its opposite.
Is it possible that Trump’s sheer stupidity, greed and narcissism is so extreme that it flips the world to an accelerated Green transition?
Iran has now proven that control of the strait “gives it a stranglehold over the world economy . . . Even if the Islamic republic decides, at some point, that it has an interest in reopening the Strait of Hormuz — it will always want to retain the option of closing it again as a visible threat to ward off aggressors.”
Heavy reliance on imported oil and gas, in short, means a chronic risk of severe and unpredictable economic shocks. The Iran crisis has focused the minds of governments around the world on this problem — and on how clean energy could help them address it.
European natural gas prices surged after Iranian missile strikes caused damage to the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export plant, stoking concerns about prolonged tightness in global supplies.
QatarEnergy said several of the LNG facilities inside its Ras Laffan Industrial City were attacked by missiles, “causing sizeable fires and extensive further damage.” Later, QatarEnergy’s chief executive officer told Reuters that the attacks knocked out about 17% of the country’s LNG export capacity and that repairs will take three to five years.
…energy experts say some countries are better positioned to weather this energy crisis than they would have been just a few years ago. That’s because of the rapid growth of renewable energy, battery systems and electric vehicles, says Jan Rosenow, energy and climate professor at Oxford University.
“That’s not a coincidence,” Rosenow says. “It’s a deliberate strategy to move away from [imported oil] and electrify.”
In China, more than half of new car sales are now electric. In Nepal, it’s more than 70%. As oil prices rise, residents with EVs are less vulnerable than if they had to rely on fuel. “It’s an energy security solution and it’s a cost solution,” says Kingsmill Bond, analyst at the energy think tank Ember.
Natural gas and LNG prices are also rising. But countries like Pakistan are more resilient because of the unprecedented growth of solar, says Nabiya Imran, at the Pakistani think tank Renewables First.
“The widespread adoption of solar and batteries kind of serves as a hedge or a protection sort of against these price shocks that the fossil fuel markets are very vulnerable to globally,” she says.
Some countries in Latin America and Africa are still deciding between investing in traditional fossil fuel infrastructure or renewable energy and batteries. The growing energy crisis fueled by the war makes the stakes more clear, Bond says. “ Once you’ve got your solar panel, there’s no cost for the sun,” he says. “But once you’ve got your gas fire power station, you have to pay every day for the gas that you burn in it.”
“With a stroke,” he says, “this war has dramatically increased the power and the influence of those who want to go down the solar route.”